FRANCES USHER BLOG

The second, in a Series called “The Modern Caryatid”, Gender Profiling is intended to explore today’s issues using historical context. One quickly realizes that these issues are ageless and still politically controversial.​

This piece is presently being worked on. It is a human form inside a wooden sarcophagus with no arms and legs, no voice and no sexuality. It is similar in nature to the first in this series, called “The Rococo Figure”, involving a female form exhumed from laminated 2”x4”’s wrapped around a wooden 4”x4” outdoor support post.

More importantly, this first work, Rococo Figure, provided a valuable counterpoint to this present work. Not able to be shown here, Rococo Figure is an actual support column for a storefront located in the Toronto area. Although perfectly suited to its surroundings, it too bears the scars of exploitation of today’s world. And so, the birth of the Caryatids Series!

​The paradox, as a supportive and unyielding “pillar of society”, (Caryatids of Athens), was too much for me to leave alone. Unlike the historical Caryatids, the Modern Caryatid series deals with human exploitation.